Striking writers target Desperate Housewives

Striking writers who earlier this week forced The Late Show with David Letterman and The Tonight Show with Jay Leno to air reruns, while reducing the presenters of Dancing With The Stars to traumatic improvisation, have upped the ante by descending on the LA set of Desperate Housewives. According to the BBC, Seinfeld luminary …

[Dan]

"I want to say I love my writers. In honour of them today, I'm not going to do a monologue."

Well, thank fuck for that.

[Ross Fleming]

"I want to say I love my writers. In honour of them today, I'm not going to do a monologue."

Or rather:

"I want to say I love my writers. Please come back. They haven't written my monologue so I'm stuffed"

[Ian Ferguson]

I find this whole thing hilarious!

Maybe this will force TV studios to hire presenters with their own personality!!

[joe]

ummmm

Isn't Jay Leno in Los Angeles?

And as for Ellen skipping her monologue, I think it's an even bigger favor for her audience. Now if she could just skip the rest of the show.

[Spleen]

American humour strikes again

"I want to say I love my writers. In honour of them today, I'm not going to do a monologue."

Of course, reading a quote you don't have any idea of the context, or the manner it was said. If this was a British show it would have been a joke.

But this being an American show, we can be absolutely certain that this was said totally without irony.

[Mickey Porkpies]

irony is womens work

if they don't write the scripts and BBC cut all the funding for anything worth watching we will have a world of **** TV which gets over the DRM issue. Who want's to steal that?

ahh.. my plans falls at the first hurdle it is ALREADY **** !!!!

[Adrian Jones]

"hunkered down for a long one"

Now how do I get the image that this produced out of my head?

[Eddie]

Hmmm, talent?

Weren't folk like Leno, Letterman and De Generes comedians?

So wtf are they having to rely on scripted monologues?

Can't they, you know, improvise? Say something funny?

Maybe the writers have a point if these so-called comics can't do their shows without them.

[Anonymous Coward]

Lucky us...

...since most of the world outside the US has to cope with last season's episodes, occassionally interspersed with much older reruns anyway. We won't notice unless the strike lasts a couple of years.

The only known exception to this was the Hammond crash episode of Top Gear, which aired only a month or two late (but that wasn't 'merkin)

<flamebait>Anyway - this could be a blessing for all of us - the Tonight Show was OK under Carson, but I think Jay Leno should have stuck to Doritos ads</flamebait>

(PS - could we have a flamebait icon please? A petrol can or something would do the trick)

[Anonymous Coward]

Ouuu

The studio is threatening to fire them???

YES!

FIRE THEM!

[John A Blackley]

From the front lines

Day three of the writers strike and the hot news this morning comes from our reporters (actually, my friend who is unemployed and a bit of a star f()cker) in Los Angeles. Jay Leno in bookstore shocker! Last night 'comedian' and erstwhile talking head Jay Leno was spotted in the Humor section of Barnes & Noble's bookstore in Los Angeles. Witnesses (my friend - ed) say Leno was browsing the '1001 Fart Jokes' series when spotted. Upon being spied, Leno dropped volume 19 of said series and hurried to a waiting limo.

Meanwhile, in Iowa, nothing relevant to this story continued to happen.

In a surprising development, viewing numbers for the Fox Soccer Channel have shot up like a Republican Congressman's fly zipper when a camera appears. In related news, Barnes & Noble report their biggest seller of the week to be An Idiot's Guide To That Fairy Round Ball Stuff They Do In Europe - except for the Los Angeles store which reports healthy sales of '1001 Fart Jokes'.

[Anonymous Coward]

@Ross Fleming

If I understand the WGA rules correctly, even if she did write her monologue herself Ellen DeGeneres would still fall foul of the rules.